“Well, but,” said Mr De Vellum, “that’s the piece Mr Inglis bought at the sale last year, when I bid for you.”
“Just so,” said Mr Jones; “I was walking across it, as I have done hundreds of times before.”
“Ah!” said Mr De Vellum, “but it has been enclosed, and you know, my dear sir, you were trespassing. Let me order in a glass of wine,” he continued, for Mr Jones had luckily come for advice to a sensible man; “let me order in a glass of wine, and then I’ll give you my advice.”
The wine was brought in, and then Mr Jones received his advice, which cost him six shillings and eightpence, but would have been cheap at a guinea, for the advice was to go home and take no more notice of the matter.
Mr Jones was quite cool when he heard the solicitor’s opinion; and it was so much in agreement with his own, that he immediately shook hands, said “good-day,” and made the best of his way home.
Chapter Twenty One.
Catching Tartars.
Mr Jones used to have a man, who was a jobbing gardener, come once a week “to put him a bit straight,” as the man called it; and this gardener used sometimes to meet old Sam at the Red Lion, when they would have a pint of beer together, and compare cabbages and gooseberries; talk about peas and plums; and relate how many snails they had each killed, by putting salt on their tails, during the past week. Now, it so happened that Sam went to the Red Lion on the very night that closed in upon the day when Mr Jones muddied his white trousers; and it also so happened that Ikey Fogger, the jobbing gardener, thought that he too should like a half-pint at the Red Lion. The consequence was, that the two tillers of the soil began to compare notes, and very soon the history of Mr Jones’s misfortune was talked over, and so heartily laughed at by every one present, that old Sam grew quite proud of the feat; and at last let out that Master Harry and he had done it, and it “sarved old Jones right.”